Just a general question for other investigators, how many miles do you normally put on your vehicle? Last September I got a brand new car, drove it off the lot with 0 miles, and now exactly one year later I just hit 18k miles. I was also gone TDY for about 5 months this last year and my car was just sitting at home not being used. I basically live in my car it seems like. Obviously not all of it is work related mileage but I would assume I’ve accrued at least 12 or 13k miles just from the job as I don’t use my car for much else other than going to the grocery store
As a contractor, I used to put on 18K to 25K a year.
Shouldn’t you be logging all of your work mileage? If you are a contractor and it’s not reimbursed, you can deduct it and if it IS reimbursed you need to turn it in every few weeks. If you are an employee, you should be getting reimbursed.
Correct. Think the point was how much driving people do, not about claiming it.
Yes, we get reimbursed for mileage and I keep very close track of that and submit my reimbursement requests daily. It’s just crazy how much we have to run our cars into the ground. I left my house at 8am this morning and I was back before noon and I still drove 105 miles just for this morning. I’m not really complaining since we do get reimbursed fairly and payments are every week. I did an oil change 3 weeks ago and I’m already due for another one 
You’re absolutley right, as investigators we drive almost daily and basically live in our cars during the work day. We accrue a ton of miles on our cars.
I was an investigator for over a decade, both as FT for a while and then 1099.
I just pulled my logs from 2017:
13,134 miles claimed as business miles.
Out of 52 weeks in the year, I worked about 48 (~ four weeks vacation). Subtract another week for Federal Holidays that I did not work, so about 47 weeks worked in that year.
This comes out to about 279.5 miles per week.
My heaviest days were Monday and Tuesday (often 8 to 10 hours fieldwork). Wednesday and Thursday mornings were light fieldwork days, and the afternoon spent transmitting reports. I never worked on Fridays.
So if you average 279.5 over 4 working days in a week, that comes out to about 70 miles a day.
When I was younger I used to deliver pizzas in Northern VA and I didnt drive nearly this much.
Well . . . I was working for a bank, as an employee, and commuting 60 miles each way, each day. 600 miles a week. No reimbursement and no deduction . . . Just sayin’ . . .
Well, hopefully the bank paid a suitable wage to make the drive worth it. As a lowly investigator the pay would definitely not be worth a weekly 600 mile commute
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